Switching indexing? You didn't just let the 0'th element of the Java array sit empty and ignore it? It's only one reference's worth of memory, well worth it to keep the indices in sync, and you pretty much only have to worry it on import and export. (And either write your loops to start at 1 in Java or write them to accept a NullPointer in the first slot without crashing.)

The only time that would be annoying would be if you were constantly sticking arrays together in Java, and even then, one "arrayGlue" method(/FUNCTION, stupid Java designers) would have handled that.

Is/are isn't an issue in Russian - the word ???? affirms existence of both singular and plural. Zero isn't plural - it's always phrased in the negative, being a lack of something, which is more intuitive. In English, I'd use "There are 2 types of person...", as the number of groups is cardinality, which is unambiguously two in this case. Array indices are ordinality; zeroth, first, second, etc. are designators, neither singular nor plural.

You know, we need to shake things up a little in the now-stagnant world of number representation jokes. My contribution:

There are 00100000 types of people in the world: those who understand 8-bit little-endian one-hot binary encoding, those who don't, and people who understand why I had to include a third group of people to differentiate this from ordinary binary.

phlip wrote:There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who think this joke is ridiculous, and not funny.

There are also 2 types of people in the world: Those who use inside jokes from one community in another, and those that hate me for it.

I once tried to collect all the variations on that joke I had heard. It's somewhere here in my giant notepad file of miscellaneous text, lemme find it:

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who understand telepathy and.
There is one kind of person in the world.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who separate people into two kinds and those who don't.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who have friends. (From Toothpaste for Dinner)There are two kinds of people in the world: (1) who start their arrays from 1, and (1) those who start their arrays from 0 (From bash.org recently)There are ten kinds of people in this world: people who understand binary, people who don't, african-americans, caucasians, asians, americans, europeans, introverts, extroverts... Hold on, there's lots more than ten kinds of people.

I think the Toothpaste for Dinner one is my favorite, but the problem is that when you try to tell it, people jump in and finish it for you when you say the first half, and that should add to the irony but really it just takes the wind out of the punchline. Same thing happens with another of my favorite Toothpastes, with the crazy Robarb guy talking -- "How many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb? None, 'cause they're all cut up in barrels in my basement."

phlip wrote:There are 2 types of jokes in the world: those with a punchline and those without.

This best mindfuck about this joke is that it can be seen as both options.

It's kinda like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It can doesn't really have a punchline until you've read it and understood that it has no punchline, which is in fact a punchline. So you change the outcome by reading it.

"There are two types of people in this worl--"
"Oh me yarm, i hate these jokes... but fine tell me anyways"
"Ok... So there are two types of people in the world: " *dramatic pause* "males and females."
...
...
...
...
...
"Umm, thats your joke???"
"Yep" *:D*
...
*SLAP*

There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who understand trinary, and those who understand both and are reading this through to the end just to see if there are three or four types.

bbctol wrote:There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who understand trinary, and those who understand both and are reading this through to the end just to see if there are three or four types.

Yeah, I know, not funny.

How many lightbulbs does it take to screw in a dyslexic?

That depends on whether or not you like to have dark in the sex.

Please don't kill me for that... I know it was bad, but couldn't resist.

EDIT: Oh me yarm, I totally missed the "in" my first time reading that